In Egypt, United World Foundation, AMU’s partner with whom we carry out projects to support children, women and families in the most difficult neighborhoods of Cairo, is transforming its activities, in the spirit of reciprocity between operators and the city’s inhabitants, to deal with the hardships caused by Covid19. Our Egyptian friends write to us about how difficult it is to keep the Foundation active in this period, but that, respecting the rules, they are trying to move forward. The Don Bosco Center, where activities for children and women take place, has been temporarily closed and programs, courses and support activities have been postponed. 
Precisely with the needs that have arisen in this period of pandemic, reciprocity finds new ways to manifest itself and so for about two weeks the operators of the United World Foundation have been engaged in an initiative called “Towards a single human family”. Thanks to the support of some local donors, they are able to prepare shopping bags containing about 200 Egyptian pounds in food and basic necessities that are distributed to the families of Shubra and Aldaher, the two neighborhoods of Cairo where the foundation operates. Families who were already living in difficulty and who today find themselves without work and means of support. From this initiative, others have been generated with many different protagonists: families that are part of the Focolare Movement have provided food for widows and elderly people in the Aldaher area. Thanks to a group of scouts, a large quantity of meat was found and delivered for the population of Minya (a city in southern Egypt) and, in collaboration with the Ali Ibn Abi Talib Mosque in Shubra El-Kheima, more than 116 families in need of support were reached.
Thanks to the support and active collaboration of many, together with the Church of the Angel in the Aldaher area, we can now deliver about 50 kg of meat to needy families living in the countryside and another 120 kg of meat to other Christian families who will celebrate Easter this Sunday.
Finally, the Foundation’s leaders want to try to keep a tradition: every year we celebrated the breaking of the Ramadan fast (Iftar) at the Center with our Muslim friends. This year it will not be possible, but we still want to reach them by delivering a chicken meal to the families that we are already trying to find. We are all living moments of great concern, but this experience that comes to us from Egypt, like the others that come to us every day from the protagonists of our projects, tell us about the strength that the community can inspire in each of us to reach out to the other, even in the most difficult moments. To go together “towards a single human family.